


Flipped Switch

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Heterodyne!Sorin FanFanFic [2]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Episode One, Gen, M/M, SO, adventures of sorin heterodyne, but spoilery, chronologically the first fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 18:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5216219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His shirt was wet with Veli's tears.</p><p>(His shirt was torn and dusty and muddy and bloodied and Sorin didn't even know which (accident, attack) event had done what.)</p><p>His shirt was wet with Veli's tears, but Veli's eyes shone brighter than he'd ever seen them, light glittering off the wet trails on his face; the hellglow of his grinning mouth outlined his fangs from behind (oh, how did that work, chemical? Some kind of light storage -- did he run out if he spent too long in the dark? Without eating some kind of food? Was it really mushrooms--)</p><p>Veli was crying and laughing and looking at him so proud it hurt like a pointed kick to the pit of his stomach, and Sorin smiled back, out of arm's reach, and batted off a little branch that had caught in his curls on the way down. </p><p>"So are we going or what?" he laughed. (Or what.)</p><p>--<br/>Expands on a flashback from Flashover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flipped Switch

**Author's Note:**

> Para gave Adi the idea, and then Adi didn't want to write it and gave me the idea, so let's all blame Adi. There are a bit less jaeger feels than first intended, but Sorin is kind of having a hard time paying proper attention, so.

His shirt was wet with Veli's tears.

(His shirt was torn and dusty and muddy and bloodied and Sorin didn't even know which (accident, attack) event had done what.)

His shirt was wet with Veli's tears, but Veli's eyes shone brighter than he'd ever seen them, light glittering off the wet trails on his face; the hellglow of his grinning mouth outlined his fangs from behind (oh, how did that work, chemical? Some kind of light storage -- did he run out if he spent too long in the dark? Without eating some kind of food? Was it really mushrooms--)

Veli was crying and laughing and looking at him so proud it hurt like a pointed kick to the pit of his stomach, and Sorin smiled back, out of arm's reach, and batted off a little branch that had caught in his curls on the way down.

"So are we going or what?" he laughed. (Or what.)

(He needed to make a good rappelling line. There was an outpost but he doubted they'd have the pieces he needed, but he could make them if -- no forge, portable forge? How would he go at making a forge, it needed to burn hot and tight and _ohh_ , lava engine, maybe he could ask -- not Veli but one of the jaegers, maybe if he asked really nice they'd bring him back an engine.)

(Maybe they'd say "Master" and say he didn't have to ask.)

"De outpost should be just behind dat -- aha."

Sorin looked over the bush Veli was pushing down. Someone out there yelled "halt!" Veli laughed, sharp and barking. "Halt hyuself! Halloooo!"

Sorin should have kept the postal dirigible. Sorin wanted to be safe off the ground and he hadn't even had time to look at all the mechanisms, Sorin wanted--

There were a pair of jaegers by the door and they were both purple, but not the same shade, and both were huge and bearded. One of them had several pairs of eyes on his forehead. Huh. They didn't know yet, Sorin was upwind and a dozen steps away... ten steps away, nine, eight...

Veli had stopped flirting cold, two days ago, had stopped flirting cold until he kissed him goodbye like they were never going to have a chance to meet again, like a soldier who knew he wouldn't --

There was a river along the fence, and a landing strip between the trees but Sorin didn't know why they would choose this place to put an outpost in, there wasn't even a village. Maybe mines? They might have base materials. Ores and things. Hmm. He wondered if you could fine-tune some kind of, maybe a table fork would do, so its precise pitch would tell the composition of the ore, how much metal could be gotten, speed up the process. His littlest tongs might not be too thick to make it...

"--Sorin?"

"Ah. Yes. Hello." The jaegers at the door were peering down, looked a little amused. Not really caring. Was it only Veli who cared? He probably hadn't told them yet. "Sorry. I'm in breakthrough."

"Oof. Und hyu vant to get him _behind_ de valls?" one of the jaegers asked Veli, laughing. There were people on the other side of the open gate in the big fenced-in yard -- humans, working around pallets of supplies, hmmmm.

"God _yes_ ," Veli said quietly between his teeth, and then grinned back like nothing mattered. "Could be funny!" he said, loud enough for the closest humans to hear. "Also he haz intel und things. Might get it out of him und onto a report before Hy lose him down another fugue hole."

"Better avoid the pallets, then," Sorin said without thinking. Was that a block of wood? It was oddly blueish. Looked really dense, too, from the effort they were making to carry it, maybe it would be hard enough for precision work-- "Yeah. Better... avoid the pallets. I wonder how the wheels -- _oh_ , hydraulics."

Veli's oversized hand landed on his shoulder, squeezed. "Jah. Ve gets hyu a pallet later," he said, all nice, and the purple jaegers traded a dubious look like it was weird, Veli being nice to him. "But for now Hy really needs to talk to de officer in charge. De jaeger officer," he added, more quietly.

"Oh _ho_." Now the purple one with all the eyes was looking him up and down with almost all of them. Sorin wondered how closely he had to pay attention to notice. Maybe you had to be in tasting range. Which, um. " _In_ teresting intel, den."

"Jah." Veli grinned again, only this time it was harder. "So unless is vun ov us asking -- mebbe Hy iz schtill missing in action, hyu gets me?"

The one with the normal number of eyes looked briefly confused. The other one nodded, like this was all casual and absolutely not unexpected. "Und hyu is defeeneetly not here vith cute spark about to go krezy fun on any cargo."

"--I'm not cute."

He got three pairs of eyebrows wagged at him for that one, three smiles from the same mold, and thought, _oh, this is where Veli belongs, this is how much he belongs_. He'd only seen him stressed out and twitchy from no backup, lonely for his brothers and refusing to complain to Sorin and...

"Are all the jaegers I meet going to flirt with me?"

"Haha. No." Veli grinned at him, too wide, too happy. "Maybe half ov dem?"

Maybe Veli had stopped flirting because it was a thing that didn't matter to jaegers, contrary to... to the other thing. Maybe that made it easy to drop.

(Maybe he had kissed Sorin like either way they were never going to kiss again.)

"I'd like to go inside now."

"Dere vill be effen more jaegers!" the one with the eyes said. "Mebbe hyu schtay out here vit us."

"Maybe I stay out here with the pallet and build myself a moving forge. It already has wheels, I'd just --" He had started it as a sarcastic joke, but really the wheels only needed to be bigger, maybe padded -- pneumatic, or he could add some good springs to cushion the platform, it was just the heat he needed that might -- but how to isolate--

" _Sorin!_ "

Oh. That face. Serious face. Sorin breathed in and out through his nose, looking at that face. Just -- Veli. He needed to hold on for Veli. Didn't know how long he could... Or why he should, but --

No, he knew why. "Okay, I need to see your superior _now_. Where is he?" Two blinks and stares, 'you're cute but not that cute', and he was -- annoyed, frustrated, why did they not get how _important_ \-- "Either call him here or show me, but _do it_."

"Hoho. Vell, hyu _iz_ a leedle bossy after all--"

" _I will use your hat as tinder for my forge_."

He knew it was Veli picking him up, so he didn't struggle, just glared from a few inches higher, hands closing around Veli's forearm for support for his ribs.

"Whoops, time to get under shelter before de rant ov doom," he was saying as he started jogging in, and Sorin just -- it was easier to keep glaring at them even if he had to crane his neck because it meant he wasn't looking at the supplies and thinking of all the things he could _make_.

"Why were they so annoying! They should have gotten out of the way, you _told_ them--"

"Iffen ve hurry to let hyu through too much, iz also pretty noticeable," Veli said, but like it was a bit too late anyway.

"Oh."

"But hyu iz a ranting spark! Hey, excuse provided."

"I'm not _ranting_."

"True, dot vas a little one."

They ambled past a knot of human guards, who watched them but didn't stop them -- not even to ask why Veli was still carrying him around -- and only one of them frowned at the total ruin of Veli's uniform like that was a thing worth thinking about. Not the best guards there! This must not be a very important outpost. Or maybe jaegers regularly got this messy...

They hadn't even noticed they didn't know this one. Sorin's brows went back down.

"Sarge Volos!" Veli called out when he stepped into a building past another jaeger sitting on the front step and dozing, swinging Sorin's legs over his hat without slowing down. Sorin blinked down at the startled-awake jaeger, and then he was swung around and put back down on his feet onto a wooden floor that had seen better days, inside a darkened front room empty of everything but a long table and a couple of chairs and someone sleeping balanced on a single foot of his chair somehow.

The horns planted in the wall at his head probably helped keep him steady. Huh. There was a door cracked open and behind that a dorm room with more slumbering people--

"Vot, go away, ken't it vait--"

"Sergeant Volos," Veli said again, dead serious. "Hy need hyu to kick dis up to de Generals."

The hat was tilted up to unveil a massive frown on a draconic face -- the large nostrils even smoked as they wrinkled in doubt. Sorin brightened. "Oh! I was wondering how I'd make the tools I needed to build my portable forge without a forge, but if you can produce flames -- what's your highest temperature, have you ever made anything white-hot?"

"Vot is a pipsqueak of a madboy _doink_ in mine barracks," Volos boomed as he swung forward and the chair crashed back on all fours with a bang that shook the floor.

"Huh, nice neck muscles, but another hit like that and the chair will break," Sorin said, and Veli said, face perfectly neutral over his shoulder, "He iz Heterodyne."

Sorin's ears started ringing a little, hearing it (first time saying it out loud, they'd only ever implied--) but from his expression, frozen mouth open, Volos had the same problem, and so did the jaeger in the dorm watching from his bed through the crack, and --

And then it seemed they all breathed again and Sorin was still reeling -- the jaeger on the front step whirled on hands and feet to look up and the dorm door banged on the wall, two -- three jaegers bursting out, and another plaintively behind, "Vot, iz dere dancing gurl?" and Sorin couldn't -- couldn't look at any of their faces, could only flit around here and there -- the detailed knotwork on the brim of a hat, the edge of metal-tipped claws, hands held half-curled between grabbing and fisting, too many wide eyes to _meet_ \--

"Chair," Veli said, and Volos kicked one out from under the table. Veli took Sorin's shoulders and guided him there, sat him down. Sorin's ears were still buzzing.

"Mirche," Sergeant Volos rasped, intense and dark, ominous, "close de door. Velimir, report."

The door closed. Veli's hand was heavy on his shoulder, comforting and trapping him both.

"Dis is Sorin Petrescu, from Vulkanburg, vhere his family schtill is. He is breaking through, he schmells right, und he heterodynes vhen he builds."

A pause.

"The Mistress of Vulkanburg iz trying to kill him, und she haz lava clanks."

Briefly, Sorin thought about asking them to bring him back a clank if they could. The look on all their faces had gone from baffled to deadly, he was sure they were already planning to go.

"May Hy," Volos asked, face closed off, as he moved around the table, leaned in. Every word brought out another puff of smoke.

Sorin wasn't sure what he was asking for, but he was polite about it -- "Sure?"

A hand reached for his hand, turned it palm up, fingers open -- Volos leaned in.

Breathed him in.

For a brief instant nothing happened and then he closed his eyes and when he opened them again there was a grin blooming on that forbidding face, a terrifying grin full of fangs and insanity.

"Hah," he said -- laughed, under his breath. "Haha. He iz." He stood up, stared down at Sorin still on his chair still grinning that mad grin. "He _iz_ of de blood. Mirche, get Slobodan und Hristo, take de delivery balloon, ve need him to de Generals as soon as possible. Vulkanburg, hyu sez? Ve vill get hyu family out as soon as possible, Master."

Yes, that was what Sorin had-- wait. Wait, what?

"Pavel, hyu pack op--"

"Wait. The delivery balloon -- that they're preparing to load?"

"Jah? Ken get to Castle Wulfenbach preddy fast--"

"No," Sorin said, already frowning as he thought. "No, I have no doubt that you could make short work of her advance party, if you spotted it first. They have hounds. We don't know if they have communication devices--"

"Ve ken--"

"We _do_ know that one of them knows who I am," Sorin interrupted. "She knows me, she knows my family, she knows where we live and where we work and if you tip our hand they could be grabbed off the street before you even get halfway there, and then where am I? I'm not walking all the way back there to get them out! I hate these stupid mountains and those _woods_ , I will burn them down and knock them flat if I have to cross them again!"

Veli was laughing quietly behind him, breathless but shaking with it; the hand on Sorin's shoulder trembled with it.

A couple of the jaegers made sad faces. "Aw, but Master--"

"No! No, I don't want to tip her off, we are going to be _discreet_. That means we don't leave ahead of schedule for her to shoot us out of the sky, and we don't tell anyone on the ground who might _talk_ , and _that_ means we don't _do_ anything that might _make them talk!_ " Huffing, he glared around, crossed his arms. "That means sticking to your schedule for now. When the supplies balloon goes we'll catch a ride and then the Generals can..."

... The Generals. He was proposing to bother army Generals to solve his little problem. No, wait -- the rebellion -- the Baron would want that sorted out, too. That had been the plan, right? To tell Baron Wulfenbach, so he would sort it out. He could just...

It was hard to trust him with it when Sorin's family was in the balance. The jaegers at least would probably be invested in keeping them safe...

... God, he hoped his family might forgive him one day. He had just -- he hadn't thought, hadn't been thinking, he'd been thinking about the wrong thing like Velimir looking off and grieving and death-brave and those hypothetical pining jaegers, those unknown townspeople -- they seemed to be fine right now -- he knew the responsibilities might, and what if people decided to -- politics, what if they got dragged in, Ludy for sure had to have the same bloodline and _Sorin_ _had decided for them_ , decided to drag them into this mess just because he couldn't...

"Master?" one of the jaegers said, all quiet and shaky, and Veli leaned over his shoulder -- gentle -- peered at him.

"Sorin?"

"I'm," he said, tried to say 'okay' and choked a little. "Not okay. I'm not okay, oh god, what have I done--"

It was too late to walk out on them. He couldn't do this again, it had killed him doing it once and besides he didn't think they'd let him, not the way they had all crowded around his chair like a pack of werewolves (like _his_ pack of werewolves.) Too many of them knew and it was too late now and... And.

The blue one was crying, fist stuffed in his mouth, pressed in a corner of the room and sobbing as quietly as he could, as the rest of his brothers grinned their hungry grins and stared at Sorin like any second now he might either give the signal to hunt, or take off to be chased himself. He'd been crying a while, his whole face wet with it--

"--Are _you_ okay?"

"No," the blue jaeger blurted out. "Yes? Sorry. Sorry, Hy--"

Sorin pushed out of his chair and Veli's hand slid to his back, followed, Veli didn't say a thing so it had to be fine when he walked to the blue jaeger and reached out and then they were both hugging and crying on each other, throats painful-tight with it for totally different reasons.

 _I'm scared_ , he wanted to say, _I'm scared, I don't want this_ , but then he would have had to say _I don't want you_.

"-- _Master, Master, thank god, thank god, Hy missed hyu, Hy missed -- home, ken go home, thank hyu--_ "

There was no way he could ever say that.

Veli's hand was rubbing circles against his back. Someone else patted his shoulder cautiously -- the blue jaeger's shoulder, less cautiously; Sorin shook with it. Someone was murmuring, worry, awkward sympathy...

"Okay," Sorin made himself say, head already aching from the tears. "Okay, let's take a deep breath. Let's just... It's okay. It's going to be okay."

The blue jaeger let out a wet laugh and grinned lopsidedly at him, shyly ducking behind his hat, and Sorin's heart broke. Two of his brothers were gathered at the blue one's sides, still patting him. "Dere, dere, hyu blubbering snot fountain," one of them said gruffly-nice, his own eyes a little too wet.

Sorin's parents might never forgive him. But maybe he could... find a nice village for them, warm and safe. _Build_ them a nice village. If no one knew who they were, no one could drag them into Sorin's messes. It wouldn't fix it, but it would make it less of a catastrophe.

As long as they were safe. He could deal with the rest.

It looked like some of the jaegers did need him.

"I... think she didn't follow us, but I could be wrong, so--"

"Ve sneak out more guards," Sergeant Volos assured him gruffly. "Ken get to a goot half hour's varning, iz plenty."

"Okay." Okay. Sorin was going to trust that he knew his job. "And I will... sit in a corner and build. Something. Um. Don't hesitate to throw me over your shoulder if I'm going to make you miss the balloon."

"Jah," Veli assured him quietly, eyes laughing. "Verra absent-minded madboy ov hyu."

"Haha," Sorin replied blandly. He stood up, looked around vaguely -- didn't know where to set up that he wouldn't bother people, what to even build with...

Wood was a pain, but the house and furniture were nothing but. Wood was good for _when you wanted a forge to get roaring_. The only thing good about the planks and the chairs and the rest were the goddamn nails keeping them in -- oh.

Okay, first, pull the nails out, _then_ he would have something to work with. Pull the floorboards up and make a fire _pit_ and--

"Mebbe get inside de dorm room, Master, iz farther from de vindows..."

"No, the smoke will -- wait, I guess you _could_ knock a hole in the roof!"

"Dere iz a chimney already, sveetie," Veli told him, all fake-patient and _laughing at him again_.

Sorin swept a quick, impatient hand across the salty mess of his own face and glared, rocking onto the balls of his feet. "Well that chimney is all wrong! Just let me show you how shoddy--"

The madness place was as terrifying as its name implied and he could feel it dragging him down, and he didn't know what he might do. Anything? _Everything_. He could make something to make his parents safe and he could make something to make the _Viscountess_ safe (she wouldn't like it but who _cared_ , when he was done with her she would never betray the trust of her people again--)

He may come back up to a crater for a barrack, but barracks could be rebuilt and this one was _shoddy_ anyway, yes, maybe this would be a _favor_ \-- maybe he could _show_ the _artisan_ who had committed this atrocity to _stuff those poor jaegers into_ \--

(He didn't have to think in the madness place, paradoxically enough. He didn't have to be scared of anything.)


End file.
